January 09, 2004

Another power failure (10 hours)

OK, this is getting old :-) We were so happy this morning when the electicity was restored. The food in the refrigerator was still OK, I was able to make some morning espresso, and with the roads in bad shape, I began another day at the laptop working from home. Then around 10:30am a heavy, ice-encrusted branch from a neighbor's tree broke off and dropped onto some live power wires. The branch immediately began to smoke heavily, with little flames dancing here and there. After a minute or two one of the power wires snapped, with a second breaking a very short while later.

So after 10 hours, we thankfully have power again - in time for a warm night's sleep. We are so lucky, and I feel very grateful to the folks who work such long hours in pretty miserable conditions to restore the power when the storms do their worst.

January 08, 2004

Power failure (13 hours)

Yesterday the power went out around 3pm. We've had some snow and a LOT of freezing rain the past couple of days. There's about a one-inch coating on everything outside - I can walk on top of the snow and the ice crust does not break. Well I was working from home (since the office building was closed), and then at about 3pm ...BOOM! and the power went out.

Just before 4am this morning the power came back on, which was wonderful, because that meant not only could I fire up the PCs again, but I could also brew some morning espresso! :-)

January 06, 2004

Good day for working at home

It's hard to tell from this picture (click on it for the full-size image) from earlier this morning, but it was - and is - snowing hard! Well, 'round these parts, we don't get too much snow. We're more used to rain, and showers, and drizzle, and sprinkles, and several others words that all equate to wet. So when we do get real snow, things kind of stop. And on days like today, when the snow is coupled with ice, well, then it's a real mess.

On most work days I drive to a Park-and-Ride lot (commuters park their cars and take mass transit), and ride the Portland TriMet MAX train into downtown Portland, Oregon to work. Not today. The electric train is able to push through some of the snow, but trains are getting stuck on a mild hill they need to climb just before a bridge that goes across the Willamette River downtown. Oh, and the switches on the tracks are frozen, so that's not really a good thing either.

OK, time to get back to the laptop. Good thing I work with Lotus Notes and can work with local replicas of all my needed databases, connecting every hour or so to get/send any updates. :-)

January 01, 2004

2004 - Beautiful start to the year

Update later in the afternoon - My son is home from college (going to school in Tampa), and was hoping to get some snow during his winter break. The wish has been granted. Here he is by the new snowman:

December 31, 2003

This evening while I was upstairs being a geek...

...my wife was out front playing in the snow (I thought she'd been reading!). When she called me outside around midnight, here's what she'd built:
Very awesome. Note the attention to detail: sculpted eyebrows, apples for eyes, and a banana for the smile :-)

December 21, 2003

Always time for espresso

My son, Ben, is home from college for a few weeks, so we went up to Timberline at Mt Hood for some snowboarding (Ben), skiing (Joe), and ski-boarding (both of us). Well, the skies never did clear up as we'd hoped, but it was still a great time. After an hour or two, it was time to refuel with some espresso:
Yup, I brewed some espresso before we left home, and had a thermos and cup in my backpack :-)

...and even though the clouds hung around, it was still beautiful:
But this being our first ski trip this season, our legs could only hold out for about half the day. Man, we're going to feel this tomorrow! :-)

November 19, 2003

Mutant snowflakes

Winter is here. Officially. Starting this morning. After sunrise, the temperature suddenly plummeted, and the snow started. These were mutant snowflakes. Big, wet, did I say BIG? I saw snowflakes 2 to 3 INCHES across! This was just weird!

So here's a picture of the neighborhood this morning as the snow was falling:

...And looking the other way:

...And then later in the morning when I came down from the office for a cup of coffee, I saw that our beautiful maple tree had broken under the weight of all of the heavy wet snow, trapped on the leaves that normally would have fallen by now:

Sadly, I had to pull out the chainsaw and amputate a couple of large branches from the tree. I was able to knock the wet snow off of the other branches and they sprang back up to proper position. But I'm afraid that I'll have to take this tree out before the spring comes; I detected too much old damage that I'd not seen before :(